Sara Rue And Sara Lue As Consonants

[Richard W]

Incidentally it [http://www.thai-language.com/ref/altcons] makes a statement that ฤ and ฦ are consonents, (this view is not currently taught in schools) and does not mention ฤา and ฦา . It is not too important I agree but could start another endless discussion.

There are five characters with a mixed or debatable consonant/vowel nature - ฤ, ฦ, ว, อ and ะ.

อ and, I presume at least in part, ฤ, ฦ historically derive from independent vowels - the other indivisible independent vowels have simply been dropped from the Thai script, though they survive in other mainland SE Asian alphabets. ฤ has to be assigned a tone class so that words starting with it can be associated a tone - they are consistent with it being of the low class. I presume ฤ could bear a tone mark, though it would most likely be in a hypothetical word such as *ฤ่ๅห์ (typed in the order sara rue, mai ek, lakkhangyao, ho hip, karan), though I suspect not everyone's renderer will display it properly.

ว and อ function as pure vowel symbols as well as pure consonant symbols.

I sometimes argue that ะ represents a final glottal stop, just as อ represents an initial glottal stop. It appears to derive from the visarga, which represents a final /h/, a voiceless consonant, whereas in Indic languages ห represented a (breathy) voiced variety of /h/, as befits its origin as, generally, a reduced version of /dh/ (ธ) or /jh/ (ฌ). As to the pronounciation as 'sara a', just note that final ร changes the final vowel to /aw/. (The effected of silenced ho hip is spelt out explicitly, as in เคราะห์ [sH]khraw from Sanskrit graha.

All five symbols count as consonants for alphabetic ordering - it is immaterial whether you count ะ as the final consonant or the first vowel!

If you treat ฤ, ฦ as consonants, I see no need to list ฤๅ, ฦๅ separately, as lakkhangyao is really just a positional variant of the length marker sara aa, as evidenced by Tgeezer's post! In fact, I think it is a shame that Unicode encoded them separately. (The justifications are that one can convert TIS-620 to Unicode and back without correcting incorrect selections of sara aa v. lakkhangyao, and that one can display lakkhangyao on its own, thought the latter argument was not applied for repha in most Indic scripts.)

[tgeezer]

Incidentally it [http://www.thai-language.com/ref/altcons] makes a statement that ฤ and ฦ are consonents, (this view is not currently taught in schools) and does not mention ฤา and ฦา . It is not too important I agree but could start another endless discussion.

There are five characters with a mixed or debatable consonant/vowel nature - ฤ, ฦ, ว, อ and ะ.

อ and, I presume at least in part, ฤ, ฦ historically derive from independent vowels - the other indivisible independent vowels have simply been dropped from the Thai script, though they survive in other mainland SE Asian alphabets. ฤ has to be assigned a tone class so that words starting with it can be associated a tone - they are consistent with it being of the low class. I presume ฤ could bear a tone mark, though it would most likely be in a hypothetical word such as *ฤ่ๅห์ (typed in the order sara rue, mai ek, lakkhangyao, ho hip, karan), though I suspect not everyone's renderer will display it properly.

ว and อ function as pure vowel symbols as well as pure consonant symbols.

I sometimes argue that ะ represents a final glottal stop, just as อ represents an initial glottal stop. It appears to derive from the visarga, which represents a final /h/, a voiceless consonant, whereas in Indic languages ห represented a (breathy) voiced variety of /h/, as befits its origin as, generally, a reduced version of /dh/ (ธ) or /jh/ (ฌ). As to the pronounciation as 'sara a', just note that final ร changes the final vowel to /aw/. (The effected of silenced ho hip is spelt out explicitly, as in เคราะห์ [sH]khraw from Sanskrit graha.

All five symbols count as consonants for alphabetic ordering - it is immaterial whether you count ะ as the final consonant or the first vowel!

If you treat ฤ, ฦ as consonants, I see no need to list ฤๅ, ฦๅ separately, as lakkhangyao is really just a positional variant of the length marker sara aa, as evidenced by Tgeezer's post! In fact, I think it is a shame that Unicode encoded them separately. (The justifications are that one can convert TIS-620 to Unicode and back without correcting incorrect selections of sara aa v. lakkhangyao, and that one can display lakkhangyao on its own, thought the latter argument was not applied for repha in most Indic scripts.)

I appreciate that philology is an interesting field but not quite what I am talking about which is Thai language as practised today. The anomolous character of the naming of the consonents and application of the tone rules doubtless has an historical dimension, but which characters to include in which groups surely must be standardised by now and not really open to interpretation. I believe this to be 44 consonents and 32 vowels, the individual symbols of which there are 21, which are combined to make up the vowel sounds which include อ ย ว are not counted as vowels. What is Unicode by the way?

[Richard W]

The anomolous character of the naming of the consonents and application of the tone rules doubtless has an historical dimension, but which characters to include in which groups surely must be standardised by now and not really open to interpretation. I believe this to be 44 consonents and 32 vowels, the individual symbols of which there are 21, which are combined to make up the vowel sounds which include อ ย ว are not counted as vowels.

Well, there is the old analysis that says that sara ue is sara i plus nikkhahit. The old RID on-line resorted to this for Sanskrit, presumably because Windows XP with complex script support enabled could not handle vowel combinations with nikkahit. I will assume that you are not referring to this analysis.

What are you counting for the 21 symbols? I see the following candidates, shown with a consonant:

• 13 very simple vowel symbols: อะ อั อา อิ อี อึ อื อุ อู เอ โอ ใอ ไอ
  
• 2 arguably composite symbols: อำ แอ
  
• Vowel shortener: อ็
  
• Karan: อ์
  
• 4 Tone marks: อ่ อ้ อ๊ อ๋
  
• No vowel sign (phinthu), used in Thai dictionaries, and as a vowel modifier in minority languages: อฺ
  (Personally, I think the minority language modifier is actually the Roman 'dot below' modifier, as it written below the centre of the consonant rather than below the right of the consonant.)
  
• Nikkhahit (needed for Sanskrit and Pali - and used as a vowel in Lao): อํ
  
• Consonant-clustering sign (yamakkan), which I've never seen used: อ๎
  
• Indic syllabic r (no leading consonant): ฤ
  
• Indic syllabic l (no leading consonant), not used in modern Thai: ฦ
  
• Lakkhangyao (shown after ฤ): ฤๅ
  

I'm tempted to count the first 4 groups, though it is useful to know phinthu. I believe there is a natural reluctance to count both sara am and nikkhahit. Computers treat sara aa and lakkhangyao as distinct, which messes up my list of 21.

I'm not sure what these 32 vowels are.

There are

• Core group of 32: อะ อั อัว อัวะ อา อำ อิ อี อึ อื อือ อุ อู เอ เอ็ เออ เออะ เอะ เอา เอาะ เอิ เอีย เอียะ เอือ เอือะ แอ แอ็ แอะ โอ โอะ ไอ ใอ
  
• Oft omitted เอย
  
• 2 vowels using Indic syllabic r symbol, and not needing a preceding consonant: ฤ ฤๅ
  
• 2 vowels using Indic syllabic l symbol, and not needing a preceding consonant: ฦ ฦๅ
  
• Maitaikhu plus consonant: อ็อ (possibly restricted to loans from English)
  
• 2 vowels shown by clear consonants: อว ออ
  
• Ro han: อรร
  

It seems fairly clear that transparent compounds of vowel plus semivowel, such as อัย and อิว, are not included.

Have I included compound vowel symbols I should not have done in the 'core group of 32'? If my list is correct, that would seem to put ฤ and ฦ in the set of 44 consonants, alongside the 42 that are actually used in the present-day Thai language.

What is Unicode by the way?

Unicode is a standard ( = ISO 10646) encoding of characters as numbers. It was originally intended to encode just 'all commercially significant characters', at which point it was hoped to squeeze them all into 16 bits. It is now intended to cover all non-proprietary non-idiosyncratic characters, and it is confidently expected that these will squeeze into 20 bits. ('Non-proprietary' excludes the Apple logo; non-idiosyncratic excludes private alphabets people might invent, though if enough people take them up, e.g. Tolkien's Tengwar, they may be adopted. The Klingon script was rejected because those communicating in written Klingon use the Roman alphabet.) There are search-friendly methods, UTF-8 and UTF-16, of packing these codes into 8- and 16-bit chunks so that the most commonly used characters take up just a single chunk. For example, many web pages consist mostly of commands written in ASCII, while Windows NT, XP and Vista work internally in (little-endian) UTF-16. Edited February 23, 2008 by Richard W

[tgeezer]

The anomolous character of the naming of the consonents and application of the tone rules doubtless has an historical dimension, but which characters to include in which groups surely must be standardised by now and not really open to interpretation. I believe this to be 44 consonents and 32 vowels, the individual symbols of which there are 21, which are combined to make up the vowel sounds which include อ ย ว are not counted as vowels.

Well, there is the old analysis that says that sara ue is sara i plus nikkhahit. The old RID on-line resorted to this for Sanskrit, presumably because Windows XP with complex script support enabled could not handle vowel combinations with nikkahit. I will assume that you are not referring to this analysis.

What are you counting for the 21 symbols? I see the following candidates, shown with a consonant:

• 13 very simple vowel symbols: อะ อั อา อิ อี อึ อื อุ อู เอ โอ ใอ ไอ
  
• 2 arguably composite symbols: อำ แอ
  
• Vowel shortener: อ็
  
• Karan: อ์
  
• 4 Tone marks: อ่ อ้ อ๊ อ๋
  
• No vowel sign (phinthu), used in Thai dictionaries, and as a vowel modifier in minority languages: อฺ
  (Personally, I think the minority language modifier is actually the Roman 'dot below' modifier, as it written below the centre of the consonant rather than below the right of the consonant.)
  
• Nikkhahit (needed for Sanskrit and Pali - and used as a vowel in Lao): อํ
  
• Consonant-clustering sign (yamakkan), which I've never seen used: อ๎
  
• Indic syllabic r (no leading consonant): ฤ
  
• Indic syllabic l (no leading consonant), not used in modern Thai: ฦ
  
• Lakkhangyao (shown after ฤ): ฤๅ
  

I'm tempted to count the first 4 groups, though it is useful to know phinthu. I believe there is a natural reluctance to count both sara am and nikkhahit. Computers treat sara aa and lakkhangyao as distinct, which messes up my list of 21.

I'm not sure what these 32 vowels are.

There are

• Core group of 32: อะ อั อัว อัวะ อา อำ อิ อี อึ อื อือ อุ อู เอ เอ็ เออ เออะ เอะ เอา เอาะ เอิ เอีย เอียะ เอือ เอือะ แอ แอ็ แอะ โอ โอะ ไอ ใอ
  
• Oft omitted เอย
  
• 2 vowels using Indic syllabic r symbol, and not needing a preceding consonant: ฤ ฤๅ
  
• 2 vowels using Indic syllabic l symbol, and not needing a preceding consonant: ฦ ฦๅ
  
• Maitaikhu plus consonant: อ็อ (possibly restricted to loans from English)
  
• 2 vowels shown by clear consonants: อว ออ
  
• Ro han: อรร
  

It seems fairly clear that transparent compounds of vowel plus semivowel, such as อัย and อิว, are not included.

Have I included compound vowel symbols I should not have done in the 'core group of 32'? If my list is correct, that would seem to put ฤ and ฦ in the set of 44 consonants, alongside the 42 that are actually used in the present-day Thai language.

What is Unicode by the way?

Unicode is a standard ( = ISO 10646) encoding of characters as numbers. It was originally intended to encode just 'all commercially significant characters', at which point it was hoped to squeeze them all into 16 bits. It is now intended to cover all non-proprietary non-idiosyncratic characters, and it is confidently expected that these will squeeze into 20 bits. ('Non-proprietary' excludes the Apple logo; non-idiosyncratic excludes private alphabets people might invent, though if enough people take them up, e.g. Tolkien's Tengwar, they may be adopted. The Klingon script was rejected because those communicating in written Klingon use the Roman alphabet.) There are search-friendly methods, UTF-8 and UTF-16, of packing these codes into 8- and 16-bit chunks so that the most commonly used characters take up just a single chunk. For example, many web pages consist mostly of commands written in ASCII, while Windows NT, XP and Vista work internally in (little-endian) UTF-16.

[tgeezer]

I am no great intellect these are not my ideas this is what I was taught, I declare that the old analysis is of interest, but not current. The twenty one symbols: you must know what I mean because you have referred to them. They have been very much 'smartened up' if they are not as you understand them. For instance the Sara is a complete symbol, it may help to imagine that sara อึ is อิ with naruehit slapped on top but it gets very woolly if you do it because what is now said is 'pin ee, naruehit' 'pin ee, fan noo' for อื etc. They are then transformed into vowels and can be referrred to as sara eu sara... Oh god I picked the wrong example there! but you know what I mean. believe me this is a better system there is no doubt, your semi vowel อัย with ไอย are explained as alternatives to ไอ . I think it helped me remember everything better but most are past that stage.

The 32 vowels as taught.

เพลงสระ

อะ อา มาคีคี เจอ อิ อี กับ อึ อื

อุ อู คุ่กันหรือ พบ เอะ เอ เส แอะ แอ

โอะ โอ โย เอาะ ออ เออะ เออ ขออย่าเชือนแช

เอียะ เอีย เอือะ เอือ แล มาประสบพบ อัวะ อัว

ฤ ฤา อีก ฦ ฦา ดูหนังสือจนเวียนหัว

อำ ไอ ไม่ต้องกลัว ถามทีไรว่า ใอ เอา

Now you see why I don't want anything to change! written in two columns short on the left you get 18 and 14 when chanting a big relief to get to 'am, i, i, ow'

Edited February 24, 2008 by tgeezer

[Richard W]

The 32 vowels as taught.

เพลงสระ

อะ อา มาคีคี เจอ อิ อี กับ อึ อื

อุ อู คุ่กันหรือ พบ เอะ เอ เส แอะ แอ

โอะ โอ โย เอาะ ออ เออะ เออ ขออย่าเชือนแช

เอียะ เอีย เอือะ เอือ แล มาประสบพบ อัวะ อัว

ฤ ฤา อีก ฦ ฦา ดูหนังสือจนเวียนหัว

อำ ไอ ไม่ต้องกลัว ถามทีไรว่า ใอ เอา

Now you see why I don't want anything to change! written in two columns short on the left you get 18 and 14 when chanting a big relief to get to 'am, i, i, ow'

Is อื is a typo for อือ?

That is a horrible mix of (a) a sound based list - long vowels (simple) and vowels followed by final glottal stops - 9 + 3 + + 9 + 3 = 24 and ( the character sequences denoting a non-glottal stop consonant and a vowel. It omits the cases where vowels are written differently in (other) closed syllables - อั, อื, เอ็, แอ็, อ็อ, เอิ, อว, special case เอย, and also overlooks รร. I wonder if the omission of รร is because doubled consonants used to indicate a preceding /a/, and รร was at most the slightly unusual case of the vowel being indicated by doubling a silent consonant.

[tgeezer]

Incidentally it [http://www.thai-language.com/ref/altcons] makes a statement that ฤ and ฦ are consonents, (this view is not currently taught in schools) and does not mention ฤา and ฦา . It is not too important I agree but could start another endless discussion.

There are five characters with a mixed or debatable consonant/vowel nature - ฤ, ฦ, ว, อ and ะ.

อ and, I presume at least in part, ฤ, ฦ historically derive from independent vowels - the other indivisible independent vowels have simply been dropped from the Thai script, though they survive in other mainland SE Asian alphabets. ฤ has to be assigned a tone class so that words starting with it can be associated a tone - they are consistent with it being of the low class. I presume ฤ could bear a tone mark, though it would most likely be in a hypothetical word such as *ฤ่ๅห์ (typed in the order sara rue, mai ek, lakkhangyao, ho hip, karan), though I suspect not everyone's renderer will display it properly.

ว and อ function as pure vowel symbols as well as pure consonant symbols.

I sometimes argue that ะ represents a final glottal stop, just as อ represents an initial glottal stop. It appears to derive from the visarga, which represents a final /h/, a voiceless consonant, whereas in Indic languages ห represented a (breathy) voiced variety of /h/, as befits its origin as, generally, a reduced version of /dh/ (ธ) or /jh/ (ฌ). As to the pronounciation as 'sara a', just note that final ร changes the final vowel to /aw/. (The effected of silenced ho hip is spelt out explicitly, as in เคราะห์ [sH]khraw from Sanskrit graha.

All five symbols count as consonants for alphabetic ordering - it is immaterial whether you count ะ as the final consonant or the first vowel!

If you treat ฤ, ฦ as consonants, I see no need to list ฤๅ, ฦๅ separately, as lakkhangyao is really just a positional variant of the length marker sara aa, as evidenced by Tgeezer's post! In fact, I think it is a shame that Unicode encoded them separately. (The justifications are that one can convert TIS-620 to Unicode and back without correcting incorrect selections of sara aa v. lakkhangyao, and that one can display lakkhangyao on its own, thought the latter argument was not applied for repha in most Indic scripts.)

I am sorry we are talking a different language, your comment that something which survives in other S/E Asian languages proves the point. I am simply learning one unified system of Thai from the bottom up, everything 'hangs-together'. The vowels and consonents are established and I acccept them. You seem to be argueing that the Thais have got it wrong. Are we supposed to understand what the sentence I have highlighted means? คร+ เอาะ+ ห์ whatever the origin, there is a very recognizable vowel in there, can't you see it? I will now go back and look at what you wrote on 'why low-class consonents are called low-class'.

[tgeezer]

The 32 vowels as taught.

เพลงสระ

อะ อา มาคีคี เจอ อิ อี กับ อึ อื

อุ อู คุ่กันหรือ พบ เอะ เอ เส แอะ แอ

โอะ โอ โย เอาะ ออ เออะ เออ ขออย่าเชือนแช

เอียะ เอีย เอือะ เอือ แล มาประสบพบ อัวะ อัว

ฤ ฤา อีก ฦ ฦา ดูหนังสือจนเวียนหัว

อำ ไอ ไม่ต้องกลัว ถามทีไรว่า ใอ เอา

Now you see why I don't want anything to change! written in two columns short on the left you get 18 and 14 when chanting a big relief to get to 'am, i, i, ow'

Is อื is a typo for อือ?

That is a horrible mix of (a) a sound based list - long vowels (simple) and vowels followed by final glottal stops - 9 + 3 + + 9 + 3 = 24 and ( the character sequences denoting a non-glottal stop consonant and a vowel. It omits the cases where vowels are written differently in (other) closed syllables - อั, อื, เอ็, แอ็, อ็อ, เอิ, อว, special case เอย, and also overlooks รร. I wonder if the omission of รร is because doubled consonants used to indicate a preceding /a/, and รร was at most the slightly unusual case of the vowel being indicated by doubling a silent consonant.

Yes to the อือ Every Thai learns this, it rhymes and is easy to remember, most don't go need to go as far as you have. Regarding your 'omitting the case':in the 21 symbols there is one called ไม้ใต่คู้ it is used to replace อะ when there is a final consonent. There is more than one way of looking at it but this is current. ล็อก you could say that this is 'สระ' อ shortened but they don't, they say it is ล+เอาะ+ก. I agree it is anolomous because it shoud be เล็ (the prog. wont let me put lak khang) but you see what I mean, the other one is ก็ same vowel and here even missing the อ้ but that's life. Have you tried telling a Thai in other than philology discussions what you are telling us?

Edited February 24, 2008 by tgeezer

[Richard W]

All five symbols count as consonants for alphabetic ordering - it is immaterial whether you count ะ as the final consonant or the first vowel!

I am sorry we are talking a different language, your comment that something which survives in other S/E Asian languages proves the point. I am simply learning one unified system of Thai from the bottom up, everything 'hangs-together'. The vowels and consonents are established and I acccept them. You seem to be argueing that the Thais have got it wrong. Are we supposed to understand what the sentence I have highlighted means?

Yes. I trust you understand the basic principles of putting words in alphabetic order, though the way Thais learn makes it difficult. The principles are:

• Tonemarks, mai tai khu and karan are only considered for tie-breaks.
  
• How a word is pronounced is irrelevant (with the possible exception of words spelt exactly the same)
  
• Compound vowel symbols are treated as sequences of the individual characters.
  
• Preposed vowels (sara e etc.) are swapped with the first immediately following consonant - thus เจริญ is looked up as จ เ ร ิ ญ.
  
• Roughly speaking, consonants come before vowels.
  

In applying the rule consonants before vowels, note that:

• Consonants used in or as vowel symbols are treated as consonants.
  
• ฤ is treated as though it were a consonant coming immediately after ร.
  
• ฦ is treated as though it were a consonant coming immediately after ล.
  

Putting symbols on o ang where there would otherwise be display problems, in functional terms the alphabetical order is ... อ ฮ ะ อั า ..., and when sorting real words it makes no difference where in the vowels you put lak khang yao (ๅ).

คร+ เอาะ+ ห์ whatever the origin, there is a very recognizable vowel in there, can't you see it?

Of course I can. It's just odd that it's written เคราะห์ rather than ครห์. After all, one writes พร, not พอร.

It omits the cases where vowels are written differently in (other) closed syllables - อั, อื, เอ็, แอ็, อ็อ, เอิ, อว, special case เอย, and also overlooks รร.

Regarding your 'omitting the case':in the 21 symbols there is one called ไม้ใต่คู้ it is used to replace อะ when there is a final consonent. There is more than one way of looking at it but this is current. ล็อก you could say that this is 'สระ' อ shortened but they don't, they say it is ล+เอาะ+ก. I agree it is anolomous because it shoud be เล็ (the prog. wont let me put lak khang) but you see what I mean, the other one is ก็ same vowel and here even missing the อ้ but that's life.

The rule also fails to account for the closed syllable equivalents of อะ, อือ, เออ, เออะ and อัว, giving the wrong form in two cases.

Does anyone here know if there are 'standard' closed syllable equivalents of เอียะ, เอือะ and อัวะ for use in representing dialect speech? WTT 2.0 allows maitaikhu above sara ii and sara uue, but not above any of the other vowels that go above consonants. This has no function in standard Thai. Of course, it is conceivable that the report of the occurrence of this combination is actually based on the occurrence of its rough equivalent in the Lanna script.

Have you tried telling a Thai in other than philology discussions what you are telling us?

I have seen undisputed claims that Thais do not generally have the notion that there are 32 vowels, whereas they do have the notion that there are 44 consonants.

[tgeezer]

All five symbols count as consonants for alphabetic ordering - it is immaterial whether you count ะ as the final consonant or the first vowel!

I am sorry we are talking a different language, your comment that something which survives in other S/E Asian languages proves the point. I am simply learning one unified system of Thai from the bottom up, everything 'hangs-together'. The vowels and consonents are established and I acccept them. You seem to be argueing that the Thais have got it wrong. Are we supposed to understand what the sentence I have highlighted means?

Yes. I trust you understand the basic principles of putting words in alphabetic order, though the way Thais learn makes it difficult. The principles are:

• Tonemarks, mai tai khu and karan are only considered for tie-breaks.
  
• How a word is pronounced is irrelevant (with the possible exception of words spelt exactly the same)
  
• Compound vowel symbols are treated as sequences of the individual characters.
  
• Preposed vowels (sara e etc.) are swapped with the first immediately following consonant - thus เจริญ is looked up as จ เ ร ิ ญ.
  
• Roughly speaking, consonants come before vowels.
  

In applying the rule consonants before vowels, note that:

• Consonants used in or as vowel symbols are treated as consonants.
  
• ฤ is treated as though it were a consonant coming immediately after ร.
  
• ฦ is treated as though it were a consonant coming immediately after ล.
  

Putting symbols on o ang where there would otherwise be display problems, in functional terms the alphabetical order is ... อ ฮ ะ อั า ..., and when sorting real words it makes no difference where in the vowels you put lak khang yao (ๅ).

คร+ เอาะ+ ห์ whatever the origin, there is a very recognizable vowel in there, can't you see it?

Of course I can. It's just odd that it's written เคราะห์ rather than ครห์. After all, one writes พร, not พอร.

It omits the cases where vowels are written differently in (other) closed syllables - อั, อื, เอ็, แอ็, อ็อ, เอิ, อว, special case เอย, and also overlooks รร.

Regarding your 'omitting the case':in the 21 symbols there is one called ไม้ใต่คู้ it is used to replace อะ when there is a final consonent. There is more than one way of looking at it but this is current. ล็อก you could say that this is 'สระ' อ shortened but they don't, they say it is ล+เอาะ+ก. I agree it is anolomous because it shoud be เล็ (the prog. wont let me put lak khang) but you see what I mean, the other one is ก็ same vowel and here even missing the อ้ but that's life.

The rule also fails to account for the closed syllable equivalents of อะ, อือ, เออ, เออะ and อัว, giving the wrong form in two cases.

Does anyone here know if there are 'standard' closed syllable equivalents of เอียะ, เอือะ and อัวะ for use in representing dialect speech? WTT 2.0 allows maitaikhu above sara ii and sara uue, but not above any of the other vowels that go above consonants. This has no function in standard Thai. Of course, it is conceivable that the report of the occurrence of this combination is actually based on the occurrence of its rough equivalent in the Lanna script.

Have you tried telling a Thai in other than philology discussions what you are telling us?

I have seen undisputed claims that Thais do not generally have the notion that there are 32 vowels, whereas they do have the notion that there are 44 consonants.

May I call you Richard? Well Richard at risk of becoming a 'last word freak" can we just agree that we are not on the same wavelength? I spelt anomaly wrongly thanks for not noticeing that, another thing I noticed that my illustration of ล็อก was myopic in that it is exactly สระ อ shortened to สระ เอาะ

Saying อัอ อือ in the same breath is mixing apples and oranges, under the modern system อั is one of the 21 symbols, I will quote it: ไม้หันากาศหรืไม้ผัด ใช้เขียนบนพยัญชนะแทนสระอะ เมือมีตัวสกด เช่น มัด และประสบกับสระรูปอืนเป็นสระ อัวะ อัว The other vowel อือ is complete made up of 'Pin ee' and 'fan noo' the two ออ represent consonents to be inserted and when there is no final consonent lo and behold, 'or ang' is used. If you wrote เคราะห์ as ครห์ the vowel would change the vowel to the long form 'อ' ! this only happens with 'ร' as a final consonent. This is what I mean by 'hanging together'. I am sorry if the the people at one of the premier universities in Bangkok got it wrong but I am prepared to live with it and am really sorry that you are not. As to the ordering of words; if you mean Thai, I agree unreservedly, I am not open on that page so don't know to what you refer but I had no intention of ordering words correctly in my post. If you are referring to some deficiency in English then perhaps you are right again, for the same reason. I am not interested in dialect at this stage; my caddy asked me why I don't learn Lao because he is Lao, but we get on fine in Thai so why bother? This system is for children and you have come at the language from a different perspective, that is why I ask about discussions with Thais, the Thais with whom I discuss it profess to have forgotten it all but don't have an argument, perhaps they are being polite, they are all over sixty.

Edited February 26, 2008 by tgeezer

[tgeezer]

May I call you Richard? Well Richard at risk of becoming a 'last word freak" can we just agree that we are not on the same wavelength? I spelt anomaly wrongly thanks for not noticeing that, another thing I noticed that my illustration of ล็อก was myopic in that it is exactly สระ อ shortened to สระ เอาะ

Saying อัอ อือ in the same breath is mixing apples and oranges, under the modern system อั is one of the 21 symbols, I will quote it: ไม้หันากาศหรืไม้ผัด ใช้เขียนบนพยัญชนะแทนสระอะ เมือมีตัวสกด เช่น มัด และประสบกับสระรูปอืนเป็นสระ อัวะ อัว The other vowel อือ is complete made up of 'Pin ee' and 'fan noo' the two ออ represent consonents to be inserted and when there is no final consonent lo and behold, 'or ang' is used. If you wrote เคราะห์ as ครห์ the vowel would change the vowel to the long form 'อ' ! this only happens with 'ร' as a final consonent. This is what I mean by 'hanging together'. I am sorry if the the people at one of the premier universities in Bangkok got it wrong but I am prepared to live with it and am really sorry that you are not. As to the ordering of words; if you mean Thai, I agree unreservedly, I am not open on that page so don't know to what you refer but I had no intention of ordering words correctly in my post. If you are referring to some deficiency in English then perhaps you are right again, for the same reason. I am not interested in dialect at this stage; my caddy asked me why I don't learn Lao because he is Lao, but we get on fine in Thai so why bother? This system is for children and you have come at the language from a different perspective, that is why I ask about discussions with Thais, the Thais with whom I discuss it profess to have forgotten it all but don't have an argument, perhaps they are being polite, they are all over sixty.

Two mistakes,1. ปราสม. 2. My copy of the rhyme is correct, I should never have let you talk me into อือ it should be as I wrote it อื, your question prompted me to check and make a quick correction, the rhyme is wrong having been incorporated into the book and not edited to follow the book. All the vowels in the rhyme should be written as if they have a final consonent or are obviously แม่ ก กา . I am sorry now that the contrived explanation was a little patronising, and I should have known that this system needs no artifice of mine.

Edited February 26, 2008 by tgeezer

[Richard W]

I spelt anomaly wrongly thanks for not noticeing that, another thing I noticed that my illustration of ล็อก was myopic in that it is exactly สระ อ shortened to สระ เอาะ

Languages tend to do things inconsistently, and some of the spelling system is a bit arbitrary. One Thai started to teach me the compound vowel symbol ไอะ and then realised there was no such thing! (A phonologist might think this was deeply significant - does anyone trained in lingusitics, e.g. Meadish, wish to comment?)

If you wrote เคราะห์ as ครห์ the vowel would change the vowel to the long form 'อ' ! this only happens with 'ร' as a final consonent. This is what I mean by 'hanging together'.

Is there actually any example of an implicit vowel followed by ho karan? Spurred by your words, I think I can see two arguments against *ครห์:

(a) It would mean a silenced consonant affected the pronunication, whereas words like เสน่ห์ have a tone mark precisely because silenced consonants do not affect the tone. (These words have the tone you would expect if they were dead syllables, as though the final consonant were once pronounced under Khmer influence.)

( If you ignore the shortening of unstressed open syllables, *ครห์ would require a fourth value of the implicit vowel.

As to the ordering of words; if you mean Thai, I agree unreservedly, I am not open on that page so don't know to what you refer but I had no intention of ordering words correctly in my post.

I wasn't suggesting it.

I am not interested in dialect at this stage; my caddy asked me why I don't learn Lao because he is Lao, but we get on fine in Thai so why bother?

I didn't think this was meant to be a private conversation, but that intelligent comments from anyone were welcome. It's a shame we've had no input from the Thais who read this forum.

[Richard W]

All the vowels in the rhyme should be written as if they have a final consonent or are obviously แม่ ก กา .

In other words there is no consistency in the list, which is what one should expect when the first 18 items are just a list of the long and short monophthongal vowel sounds of Thai and the last eight are (compound) written vowels.

[tgeezer]

[. It's a shame we've had no input from the Thais who read this forum.

I don't know if you have noticed but it is not just Thais who are not interested! I think that we should pack it in. We have put our points of view, which is of no interest to the other readers of the forum. Thanks for at least getting into a discussion, you have helped to relieve the tedium of swimming laps.